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The Berlin Crisis of 1961 (German: Berlin-Krise) was the last major European political and military incident of the Cold War concerning the status of the German capital city, Berlin, and of post–World War II Germany. The crisis culminated in the city's de facto partition with the East German erection of the Berlin Wall.
East Germany (German: Ostdeutschland [ˈɔstˌdɔʏtʃlant] ⓘ), officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR; Deutsche Demokratische Republik [ˈdɔʏtʃə demoˈkʁaːtɪʃə ʁepuˈbliːk] ⓘ, DDR [ˌdeːdeːˈʔɛʁ] ⓘ), was a country in Central Europe from its formation on 7 October 1949 until its reunification with West Germany on 3 October 1990.
East Germany's political and economic system reflected its status as a part of the Eastern Bloc of Soviet-allied Communist countries, with the nation ruled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and operating with a command economy for 41 years until 3 October 1990 when East and West Germany were unified with the former being absorbed ...
Between 1945 and 1988, around 4 million East Germans migrated to the West. 3.454 million of them left between 1945 and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The great majority simply walked across the border or, after 1952, exited through West Berlin.
Accordingly, before 1961, most of that east–west flow took place between East and West Germany, with over 3.5 million East Germans emigrating to West Germany before 1961, [56] [57] which comprised most of the total net emigration of 4.0 million emigrants from all of Central and Eastern Europe between 1950 and 1959. [58]
The Berlin Crisis of 1958–1959 was a crisis over the status of West Berlin during the Cold War.It resulted from efforts by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to react strongly against American nuclear warheads located in West Germany, and build up the prestige of the Soviet satellite state of East Germany.
East German border guard Konrad Schumann fleeing East Germany, 1961. In 1961, the Grenzpolizei were reorganized as the Border Troops of the GDR (Grenztruppen der DDR) and were moved from the Ministry of the Interior, which oversaw policing, to the Ministry of National Defence (MfNV) which oversaw the military.
On 13 August 1961, East Germany began building the Berlin Wall around West Berlin to slow the flood of refugees to a trickle, effectively cutting the city in half and making West Berlin an enclave of the Western world in communist territory. The Wall became the symbol of the Cold War and the division of Europe.